Visual Dashboards – The Lights On Effect

“…starting to build visual dashboards that rolled up the data and showed administrators overall trends, such as which metrics were declining or stubbornly flat. “That helped us start conversations at the university that they never had before,” Catalano said. “I call it the lights-on effect. They don’t know what they don’t know until you turn on the lights. Just aggregating data in a simple visual way facilitated meaningful conversations. We provided valuable commentary as an independent actor on campus, regarding enrollment and retention trends and strategy.”

[ Darren Catalano, UMUC’s former vice president of analytics and now CEO of HelioCampus. ]

“The bigger challenge is how to get humans to catch up to the numbers and ideas thrown our way like never before. And those teams that manage it will gain a distinct advantage over opponents that can’t.” [ Geoff Baker ]